Monday, November 13, 2017

A significant and quite unpleasant part of my job is to talk to upset customers.

Today I spent well over an hour exchanging pleasantries with an eBay customer who refused to accept the fact that eBay refers to every repair service listing as an "item" and shows, without vendors being able to control that, the words "Items available" on the page.

I learned, along the way, that my use of English language is bad, that our offer is fishy and that my statements are contradicting, so beware - what I say may or may not be correct and if it sounds fishy it might indeed be!

Oddly enough, eBay sided with our version of the story this time and rejected customer's claims, so we had to take care of his issue manually after he learned from another source he was wrong...which we did, of course.

Just for the record, here's part of the exchange, before it got messy:

The reason I am making this post in the middle of a fairly busy Monday is because literally half an hour after we were done with that customer (hardly winning his heart, but being fair nonetheless and not making any money of him!) I received another feedback, from another customer and it looked like this:

Much shorter and easier to process, wasn't it?

What I find ironic is not the mere coincidence that we received condemnation and praise in one day.

That is not uncommon.

What I find ironic is that both customers have no feedback on eBay, which makes it logical that both of them are brand new there and have not had past experience dealing with eBay and repair services.

The first customer accused us in misleading him and making false representation of a repair service due to the term "Items available" placed on the page by eBay (not us!); he also accused us to be profiting from misleading people like him.

The second customer, who used practically identical repair service offer, apparently had no such issues and is now apparently happily enjoying his or her TV at a faction of the cost of a new one.

Where do you think the difference in their experiences comes from?

If it was up to you which customer would you rather be - the ones who sees problems everywhere, but not in himself or the one that reads offer descriptions and follows instructions?

It isn't black and white, I know, and I do not ask anyone to trust us blindly.

yet the public fact is that roughly 98% of our customers on eBay find us of value.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Just fixed three YSUS boards EBR77185601 all with the exact same failure symptom and I think I narrowed it down to the essentials that need to be replaced for it to not fail when you try it again.

EBR77185601 is used in LG 60PB6650-UA, LG 60PB5600-UA, LG 60PB6600-UA and possibly others.
My experience is summarized in the below video:

The board failed twice on me until I had it all figured.
Actually there were three failures, but it turned out the last one was not the YSUS itself even though it sounded and looked a lot like it, only when I took it down it was all good and upon long and close inspection I found a noise filter cap busted on the top buffer board:

The video mentions that, but doesn't include the picture, which I took before finishing the work and ensuring everything worked fine at which point I made the video.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

It was love at first sight, partially because it was beautiful and probably just as much because I got it for about $20 (it was $800+ new) total because its display was coming in and out and it was rendered unusable.

Turned out it had a tiny detachment on one of the display tabs and I found the location and was able to actually fix it...somewhat.

I stuck a piece of hard paper between the LCD and the front bezel - it was even hidden from plain view - and that caused the detached tab to make contact well enough to a point where the TV would work for say 30 or more minutes.

Over time, however, probably due to the paper going thinner, it started failing more and more again and it got to the point where I pressed a little too hard one day and it cracked.

I had already gotten used to it by then and just bough a refurbished one, which I use to date and still like.

The parts of the old I listed on eBay and this is how I learned about someone wanting to get the main board.

I don't remember the details, but he eventually ended up sending their board to Coppell TV Repair LLC and we took dab at it.

Since then we've repaired a few other dead main boards from different LG 31MU97-B monitors and we've seen two different issues develop on those; I am sure there are more that will show over time and I can't be certain we'll be able to identify or fix all of them, but for the time being we are glad to offer exchange and repair services:

1) Exchange service for LG 31MU97-B main board (or rather buy a good working board and please please return yours without being tampered so you can get credit for it):

Every now and then we also have boards available for purchase with trade-in option for the old dud (CORE purchase), but customers frequently either do not return their boards or return them so badly damaged they either can't be repaired or can't be sold or warrantied because of the way they look....and that unfortunately ends up the sale-repair-sale cycle until anther board becomes available.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

In the past month we've seen a few units of Samsung UN50H6203AF in the shop with the same issue - TV starts up, backlight is there, but there's no image on the screen even though the T-CON LEDs are on in blue and it appears as if the T-CON is just fine.

Testing output voltage to the LCD panel shows that at first it gets a spike of proper voltage, but then goes down to 0.

Then we actually ended up "repairing" (though frankly I still don't dare call this repair) one of them with another one currently waiting. The "repair" is something we've done before as a last resort by means of losing portion of the panel and re-purposing the TV for digital advertising or other situation where one could go with missing an inch or so of the display.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Have
two boards, original and one purchased on line. The original has the
blinking logo- will not turn on. The purchased one (got screwed)
seemed to work, but no picture or audio at any port, otherwise responds
to inputs.

Which card would be best for repair. No sense it repairing both of them.ANSWER:(short): Send both!(long) : A component level repair of something you have not yourself created is hardly ever a certain thing (more on that shortly) and the truth is we do not know for sure if either of the two, or however many boards you have, will end up functional. We have some statistical data, of course, and if listing is still up then this statistical data is in our (and your) favor that yes, it will be, but it's still not a sure thing.

Without knowing what is wrong with a board it is wrong to assume it can be fixed and without having seen and inspected the board it is wrong to assume its condition.

We do know for sure, however, that the more boards we receive, the higher the chances of a) us having them at least one fixed and working well; and b) us failing to service one, at least in a matter that makes is practically meaningful for both parties.

The very best guidance we can give is that we do NOT want boards that have visible signs of tampering (says so in the listing), traces of rust or other reactions resulting from nature or human impact on the board.

I can also say boards from random, small eBay sellers can easily come with invisible and possibly fatal defects; say user Joe has parted his TV and possibly a few other TVs and has made a little side business selling parts...Joe wouldn't be handling boards professionally, he's probably stacked them somewhere or threw them all in a box and when one sells he just goes hunting for it in one of the boxes and pulls it out.

Boards lay back to back, they scratch off each other and SMD capacitor or resistor or diode easily gets ripped off in the action. Good luck finding it!

Of course you aren't guaranteed against that happening with any board, but you get the point.

So to summarize, if you have one or more boards you pick the one that looks the most neat and send it if you want to send just one, or you send several if you want to increase the chances of us producing a working board.

You can have the rest back, we won't repair and charge you for more than one if you want one. You may end up paying a little extra and , worst case scenario, you may received back a board that has been worked on and it's still not functional, but that other board you'd send may as well save you another money and time for the mere cost of a combined shipping surcharge.

You can have your boards back or you can leave/sell them to us (no guarantee we'll be buying anything, but we might make you an offer if you indicate you do not need more than one back).

Saturday, March 4, 2017

There was a period in my life when I was going around doctors like crazy trying to find a solution to losing vision with one of my eyes. I didn't find a solution, but I found out that the higher in the hierarchy the doctor, the more grumpy he or she tended to be; you were supposed to get in, follow instructions and get out; only feed information when asked and exactly as asked; free input was not much appreciated.

I later noticed I tend to develop the exact same symptom in my repair service business.

It's mostly because people tend to love talking in hope that will help them, whereas most of the time - at least in my experience - what they talk about has little or absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand.

In their laymen heads they see a connection even if there is none ("it worked 5 years and it stopped when we moved it in the kitchen, but there is surge protector there, but there's also a fridge and I was thinking....").

They shouldn't be blamed for that, but at the end of the day they come to us to have a particular problem solved at a fixed and fairly low price, which does NOT include listening to lots of guesses, let alone education on why those guesses are wrong.

And those are the mild cases.

This post , like the one before, is about one of the not so common, but more aggressive cases of human idiocy that we have to deal with and which make us grumpy.

See for yourself, directly from our email (only revision to the text is the link added to the listing on eBay that was paid for):

I purchased a Sharp LC-42SB48UT power supply 715G4009-P1A-H20-003U / ADTVA2415SA4 off ebay from your company and all you guys sent me was a package saying "thank you for your purchase" WITHOUT the $70 item I bought from you guys, on top of that the package already says "delivered" and if this is the case I want my money back, I didn't just spend $70 fucking dollars for a week of patients for a sheet of fucking paper. Your shipping instructions Btw is horseshit and I better get this shit or you're gonna have a lawsuit on your fucking hands this is bullshit.

My TV model is: Sharp

This customer:
1) Has not read the listing or does not have the mental capacity to process it (no offense meant)
2) Has not read the follow-up email clarifying what was purchased or does not have the mental capacity to process it
3) Has not read the follow-up snail mail notification or does not have the mental capacity to process it
4) Uses profane language
5) Makes threats that are virtually baseless and even more certainly impractical as any lawsuit is going to end up costing him way more than what they've already spent.

From here on I can only make an educated guess that he won't be willing to recognize his own failures as the biggest contributing factor to the problem he's facing and will continue making demands.

You see, we like working with customers, not for customers, from which immediately follows that we are not willing to go for every customer.

What we don't want to is to end up paying for their lack of qualities, including ability to read and process information and communicate in a respectful and civilized manner.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

This article is a response to a negative feedback left by our eBay customer Bill Hogan, in which he accuses us in deceiving business practices, lying about shipping boxes and being rude on the phone as shown here:

(click to enlarge)

We can't pull any proofs against his last claim, so it will be our word we were not versus his, but we luckily have some proofs on the former two we'd like to introduce to anyone who's interested.

You can click on the above link to land at the eBay page for this listing or you can simply look at the below picture (red underlines are ours):

We will not explain here what this means; if we have to explain it after you read it then we've failed and you can consider we admitting to it.

Mr. Hogan apparently had not read it, though, and since he did not receive a board he opened a case in Paypal.

Here is what his case looked like (again underscoring is ours):

In his claim, Mr. Hogan said (as underlined) that he received the item , but it was not as described.

Later Mr. Hogan has closed this case and opened another one, this time with his credit card provider, now stating he did NOT receive an item:

On our end we'll say this:
1) Mr. Hogan ordered a repair service as outlined in multiple places in the original eBay listing; we are still able and willing to deliver on what was advertised provided he does what is required from him in order to do so.

2) Like all other customers who order repair services on eBay from us
Mr. Hogan was sent a snail mail reminder (the USPS tracking number
shown in the screenshot above) to send the board as per the listing's
terms or to go and read the listing and contact us to straighten the
issue if he is still not aware that he bought a service and not an item;
it is after receiving this communication (preceded by the multiple
listing entries and a follow-up email with shipping instructions
automatically sent upon order placement) that he eventually learned
about his mistake and phoned us.

3) Mr. Hogan called us on the phone and was sarcastic and rude in the face of being told the above, i.e. what is it that he ordered. He did call us liars and thieves and hung up on us on the phone; he did not admit to having placed an order in error, he insisted he ordered a physical good and we've somehow tricked him.

4) As illustrated Mr. Hogan is contradicting his own claims - once that he received an item and once that he did not.

5) By placing an order on eBay Mr. Hogan entered a legal agreement with us, which agreement bears consequences and costs, such as USPS notification cost, eBay fees and now PayPal fees we'll have to pay because of the dispute brought.

The agreement did not have fine print and is not a bite and switch one; we are still willing and able to deliver everything as advertised and Mr. Hogan (or anyone else in his place for that matter) is just as responsible for his side of the agreement his willing entered into as we are for ours.

Naturally, we claim that Mr. Hogan should bear the consequences of not having read the terms and cover the costs for breaching out of his agreement.

5) As can be seen by looking at our eBay repair service listings and in our feedback from customers quite a few people use and praise our repair services and apparently have no problems with reading and utilizing them.

If you find an omission in any of them that is in customer's harm please do not hesitate to point it out so we can address it!

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

I've read somewhere (or just made up, I can't say for sure) that by the time an empire reaches its full glory it's decay has already begun.

If that is true then Amazon Inc will definitely fail and I am not here to whine about it, but to show you something I myself find amusing more than anything else.

Consider this page with listings Amazon:

The odd thing in this page, other than us having listed merely 5 items, is the shipping cost assigned by Amazon for one of the listed boards.

Unlike eBay Amazon does not ask us what shipping is, they calculate it based on the data they have which a reliable source has provided and their team of specialists has verified and approved.

So after about 6 exchanges with support, which alone are worth posting, but I'll skip them for sake of keeping this short, eventually they asked us for proof that the board is not 900 pounds as their database shows (they have the picture, of course).

So we sent them this video showing actual measuring of the board:

I'd lie if I say I didn't expect something along the lines that was received in response.

Here it is, with a screenshot so there are no modifications at all in the message (added the red underlining):

Were they just getting back at me?

Considering it took them 6 very normal exchanges to get to here, each from different person and at least 2 times not on the subject matter at all you'd also doubt.

And this is the amusing part - I don't know if they were just getting back because of the video or they are just THAT incompetent.